Did WikiLeaks pay Bradley Manning?

12/21/11 5:02 PM EST

An individual at the Fort Leavenworth, Kan. military prison where Pfc. Bradley Manning has been held since April claimed that Manning said that he was supposed to be paid for the diplomatic cables and military reports he allegedly provided to WikiLeaks, according to a legal filing released Wednesday.

The defense witness list submitted in connection with the preliminary hearing for Manning that has been underway for the past six days at Fort Meade, Md. shows that the defense asked to present testimony from a person who claimed to have talked with the alleged WikiLeaks source at the Joint Regional Correction Facility.

According to the defense filing:

[redacted] will testify that he was taken to the pretrial section at the JRCF and met PFC Manning. He will testify that he explained the purpose of his visit and asked PFC Manning who he was and why he was at the JRCF. PFC Manning allegedly responded with, 'I sold information to Wikileaks.'

Shortly after this alleged statement, the guards realized that [redacted] should not have been in the pretrial area.

Any credible allegation that money changed hands or was to change hands between WikiLeaks and Manning in exchange for the hundreds of thousands of military reports and diplomatic cables he's accused of forking over could be a game-changer.

The Justice Department is investigating Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for possible violations of the Espionage Act. Critics have warned that any effort to prosecute Assange would put at risk mainstream journalists who receive and sometimes solicit classified information from sources. However, journalists, at least American journalists, rarely pay for that kind of information. Any offer of payment is the kind of thing that might push a prosecution of Assange from the theoretical to the probable, though money is not a necessary element of an espionage prosecution since spies sometimes act out of political or romantic motivations.

However, there have been no previous reports I'm aware of such financial payments or offers in connection with Manning's alleged leaks. He isn't charged specifically with taking money or agreeing to take money for whatever he may have released.

When Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, released the list of requested witnesses earlier this month, he redacted the potential witnesses' names. The paragraph pertaining to the alleged "sold information" comment at Leavenworth was redacted in its entirety. (The defense is under no obligation to release any filing, in full or in part.) Another version of the same document was released Wednesday by the Army Court of Criminal Appeals in response to requests from news organizations. The redactions in the new version are different and the paragraph about the alleged statement at Leavenworth is largely intact.

Lawyers for all sides did not respond to requests for comment on Manning's alleged remark at Leavenworth.The witness, whoever he or she was, was not among those who testified at the preliminary hearing that heard its last day of defense witnesses on Wednesday. Most of the defense's requests for witnesses were denied.

In online chats with the ex-hacker who eventually turned him in, Manning indicated he'd considered and rejected the idea of taking money for the data. From the chats, as published by Wired:

Manning: i could've sold to russia or china, and made bank?

[Ex-hacker Adrian] Lamo: why didn't you?

Manning: because it's public data

Lamo: i mean, the cables

Manning: it belongs in the public domain

Manning: information should be free

It's worth noting, too, that in the first leak prosecution of the modern era the Justice Department passed up the chance to go after a foreign publication that paid for classified information. In 1985, Navy defense analyst Samuel Loring Morison was convicted of passing classified spy-satellite photos to Jane's Defense Weekly. Jane's paid Morison $300 for the pictures and $200 for a related sketch, according to court documents, but the defense publication was never prosecuted.